Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1995. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1995. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Reuters NewMedia, Inc. - 04 Dec 95
Jim Wolf / Reuter
The report by the National Public Health and Hospital Institute documented the spread, notably to smaller cities, of social and public health ills generally associated with the biggest urban centers.
It found that the number of children in poverty, for instance, rose 12 percent nationally from 1980 to 1990, compared with 9.4 percent in the 25 biggest cities.
At the same time, the national rise in violent crime -- murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults -- outpaced the 25 largest cities', 46 percent to 36.4 percent, the report said.
"The issues and the challenges are spreading out," said Dennis Andrulis, president of the institute, a private non-profit group that specializes in problems facing "underserved" populations in U.S. cities.
"It's wrong to single out the cities as the sole source of the nation's social and health problems," he added in a telephone interview before releasing the report at a news conference. "The cities face great challenges, but they also appear to be by necessity addressing many of those challenges."
The report showed the number of AIDS cases per 100,000 people rose faster nationally than in the biggest cities from 1990 to 1993, soaring 141 percent compared with 135.4 percent.
The number of AIDS cases rose even faster than the national average in the 25 mid-sized cities with populations just below the biggest ones, rocketing 160 percent in the same period, it found.
In 1993, those second-tier cities recorded 40.3 cases of AIDS per 100,000 population, virtually identical with the total U.S. rate of 40 cases, but still far below the 61.2 in the biggest 25 cities.
Among the 25 mid-sized cities at issue were Wichita, Kansas; Birmingham, Alabama; Rochester, New York; and Raleigh, North Carolina.
The number of households headed by a single female in the 25 biggest cities jumped 13.6 percent in the 1980s, below the national rise of 15.8 percent, added the report, based on data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the federal Centers for Disease Control and the American Hospital Association as well as the Census Bureau.
East Orange, New Jersey, Mayor Cardell Cooper, head of the U.S. conference of Mayors Committee on Health and Human Services, said the report showed that what was previously deemed urban ills had "spread to our smaller cities."
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